Monday, December 22, 2008

Ah, it is that time of year, is it not.The time of year when the story of the spirit of friendship and giving fills the head and the heart.Yes I am speaking of the Bert & Ernie holiday moment, from Sesame Street.Oh it is magical.

Ernie, out of fraternal affection for his room mate Bert, pawns his rubber duck - in order to gather enough scratch to buy a cigar box. A cigar box for his pal Bert to store his paperclips in.

At nearly the same moment, with great irony, Bert is selling his paperclips. Selling his paperclips for the coin to buy a soap dish for his pal Ernie to store his rubber duck upon.

Doesn't it all just make you wanna smile.Isn't the whole thing a little weird, now that you look at it from the outside.

What the hell was Mr. Hooper thinking, buying used rubber ducks and paperclips?Who collects paperclips?A rubber duck?Two guys as "room mates"?There are many more questions than answers with Bert & Ernie.

Yet their spirit of giving, their affection and generosity towards one another is undeniable.

Inspirational.

It makes me want to go out and sell some strangely personal, worthless object I possess, some trinket I covet yet holds no intrinsic value - and take that pittance of change to go buy you some worthless storage thing for you to keep your own creepy little fetishist object of infatuation in.

I assume you are similarly inspired.

With this act, the two of us will be drawn closer through the journey of monetizing some creepy secret part of ourselves in order to support the other in some icky personal self-pleasuring past time.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

I am not much of a fan of those CSI shows.They depress me when I think of all of the unsolved murders and crimes against families. The reality versus the fiction, you know.

But I have recognized over the past few days how much I enjoy that aspect of hotrodding.That might be the coolest part of building a hotrod.

There is not much in the garage that I have not actually made. The other bits that are here are things I mostly know the history of - or things that were a part of some other, past project.

The T body itself is some cast-away hotrod. Some other car that had lived it's life before I got my hands on it.The 327 that was a block and a few boxes of parts lived in a "56 truck, as some saps upgrade, before I found it.The "57 Chevy rear-end lived through the abuse of another few, before it showed up here.The aluminum 'Glide transmission has pushed the power and had been tossed aside by people who thought better, before it got into my hands.Some other small block engine breathed through the tripower carb intake prior to finding a home on my bit car.

I could go on and on...

It's all had some other hard life, loved and abused before ever knowing that life had not been entirely extracted by some past hotrod guy.Most all of the bits that make up the T have been tortured and worked to the N'th degree - and yet I still think I might bolt them together with some lovingly crafted bits to make them live one more time.

I have been working on steering stuff, enlisting help from like minded folks.That has led to me disassembling the front brake bits I have in an effort to get some raw parts in my hands.

Which leads to forensics...

There are "40 Ford spindles that some previous modder thought would be bitchin' with some 11" Chev disc brakes attached.They show the signs of heavy use.Miles put under some hotrod, before finding their way to my hands.

That is where the investigation come in.Figuring the logic of some person before me.Deciphering part numbers and measurements.The fractions of inches that made things fit once before, made things work.There are no manuals for this sort of thing. No guides, that I have found, to say how one plus one might equal two.Only forensics.And determination.

The same determination, the concentration of thinking that makes dissimilar whole.The will to make beauty from scrap, and will, and hope.The ability to draw truth from evidence.The desire to actualize dreams from bits of the past and nothingness.

If you ever look through recent hotrod magazines you have probably seen some pics of this car.It's a new build with some heavy 60's influence.

Built by Aaron Grote, a guy with some shop space, time on his hands, a love of hair metal bands and a good bit of creative vision.

It's funny how easy it seems to build a car when you condense it into four minutes.Start with this, cut up that, order some of those, bend some metal to fit in there, make it shiny and go win some trophies.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Monday, December 15, 2008

This was just over on the JalopyJournal, but god damn it - it's worth posting all over the place.

The Impala's from 1958 are just about the coolest things ever for a foundation for a custom car.They were as close to a factory custom as Detroit ever got.These two are great examples.Perhaps a bit more than I would be inclined to do to a 58, but still cool.

A slight shave and a big slam, that is about all I would do. Oh, I would dip it into a vat of inky blue-black paint, too.Stark white tuck and roll, with red piping.Dark red carpet with white edging.Multi-carb Caddy power, with lots o' chrome.Cadillac wirewheels with pinner whitewalls.Can you tell that I have though about this some.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

So the next time you are talking to old Uncle Fred - if he mentions he has been clearing out that old shed and is getting rid of some of that old junk - if any of that old junk looks anything like this, please let me know.

Karen was digging through the archives here, at pretty not good HQ, and pulled out this drawing.

Man With No Pants!

It is not just a drawing, though.This was part of the deliberation and planning involved in my becoming a super-hero.

Back before I decided to take over the world, I was thinking of being a super-hero.See, I really am benevolent.The trouble was that I don't have any apparent super-powers and the chances that I might fall into a vat of Chemical X or be exposed to some intense radiation seemed slim.

I needed a way to fight criminals without super-powers.

Then in came to me, one day when I was not wearing pants.

I would be Man With No Pants!

Sure, it doesn't seem like much when I just say it, but please consider it.

If you were, say for example, robbing a bank - things are going just fine, the customers are all cowering in the corner, the teller is scooping cash into your burlap sack...Then I burst through the door.

Man With No Pants!(You have to kind of say it in that bravado singing way.)

You, no good bank robber, will be rather startled."Dude, you are not wearing any pants!"

My super-power would be my ability to distract and disarm you.

"Dude, you are not wearing any pants!" you would keep saying. "Where are your pants?"

I would bound over, grab the gun from your hands, knock you to the floor and render you immobile until the police arrive.I would, of course, leave shortly before their arrival to avoid any indecent exposure charges.

Monday, December 8, 2008

First off, it's an epic desert race of historic proportions which will likely never be seen again.Hundreds of machines battling through the worst of conditions for giant purse money.

Then, besides all ot that, somehow a publisher thought it would be a great idea to send a young-ish Hunter Thompson to the Mint 400 to function as a reporter.It is possible that without the Mint 400 that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas would never had been written.

Big stuff. One of my favorite reads of all time was due, in part, to some fool giving HST credit and an excuse to go to Vegas.

Thompson doesn't linger in his description of the race.He admits he only, really, saw the start.

After that, some time bouncing through the desert with a random earnest photographer, a trip to the casino at the start line - well, the dust and the drugs and the booze begin to cloud the view of the race.

Reports are that the photog assigned to the story, with HST, kept with job.He continued to snap pics of dust clouds.

These are not those pics, as far as I know.I lifted these from the LIFE magazine archive, I mentioned previously.

I always like to add perspective to my reading, historical context, images, all that sort of thing.These photographs fill in some grey area of my own vision of HST's story.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

It has started.All of the mirth, cheer and good will towards men is wearing on me a bit.

It is the music, really, that gets to me.The holiday music I have droning on all around me seems particularly up-beat this year.As if normal, traditional X-mas songs were not happy enough.This years round of background caroles seem to have just an extra touch of goodiness, the beat is just a bit faster, the singers a touch more enthusiastic.

Maybe this years holiday auditory assault is just a bit too jazzy.

I get that it is supposed to make us all feel a smidge more festive.Remember, I used to work for the folks package and pipe this sonic swill.I know the concepts behind the scenes, too.We are supposed to walk through stores a bit more quickly, look at a few more sales items, buy a couple extra junk gifts, stuff an extra order of appetizers down our gullets.All with a greater sense of urgency and fun.So, perhaps, it sickens me for reasons beyond just the obvious ones.

Oh, I am am one hunk of happy holiday fun - don't misunderstand me on this.I am throwing garlands and tinsel all over the place.I will be hanging stockings with the utmost of care.I nearly bought some chestnuts the other day.Yeah, chestnuts. I was going to roast them.That is some goddamned holiday spirit, there.

I would only prefer to not have this cloud of X-mas music hanging over me.

Not every fueler ends it's career cackling away at vintage drag racing meets.Some rust away in the back corner of shops, stripped of usable bits and parts. Others bounce between gaurdrails at the big end of the track, their remains swept into dust bins and trash cans.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

I was doing some research on armor, for the baboonbots, when I stumbled across this bit of cat armor.Really nice bit of kitty kit there, huh.

As you might remember, I am also sorting out some genetic modification stuff to create a glow-in-the-dark-cat-human-hybrid to function at an intermediate level of my army to be used in taking over the world. The Korean scientists are still involved, and are making some great strides. The glowing part is sorted, so it's the trans-species mash up that needs done.How hard can that be, really?

Anyway, that doesn't have anything to do with anything.What a tangent to tear off on...

We are talking about armor for good, old fashioned housecats here.I haven't quite figured out the stick thing, on the back there.But, as far as cat armor goes, that seems like some really nice craftsmanship.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Yeah, I am back.I have been for a few days.Not avoiding you, heavens no...Just catching up, trying to get used to waking up before I am ready to do things I would rather not.Taking more than a week off creates it's own challenges.

But, hey, the time off was great.You got to see some absolutely lame pictures sent from my phone.Some better pictures didn't make it through the the cellphone-camera-interwebulator.KVC took pictures with an actual camera, I will post up a link if they make it to her flik'r account.

We drove to the desert.It rained.

Yeah, it rained, in the desert.Which was kind of cool.I watched tumbleweeds turn green. It turns out that tumbleweeds are actually plants and not giant balls of sticks, escaped from cowboy movie sets.There was sun, too.And turkey, wine, pie, conversation, reunions and all of that sort of thing.

Quiet, too.I had forgotten how nice it is to drive for a long distance.Eventually, after enough miles, there is a quiet that comes with driving.There isn't anything to talk about, after a while.There really isn't much too look at, once the sun sets.There is barely anything to do, outside of the small movements required to keep a vehicle travelling at a high rate of speed between a couple of lines painted on the asphalt.That combines in a moment of quiet, for me. Thinking sort of pauses, being comes to the fore. Driving, just driving.

And we were in the south-west, which has it's own manner of quiet.It really is a landscape that is waiting for you to die, and might kill you when you're not looking.It is lovely and unforgiving.Harsh, abrasive and beautiful because of it.

You can see the remnants of the dreams of others, littering the south-west.Abandoned homes, businesses, lives are scattered all about.Worn, vandalized and empty.The shells left behind seem to mark the midpoints between the current oasis' of life, commerce and optimism.Probably some long line of commentary I could pull from that, but I won't.